


Hargreeve's children’s powers, reactions to abuse & dysfunctional family roles.

by cronaisawriter



Series: Trauma/Abuse and Media [8]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Character Analysis, Childhood Trauma, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Meta, Metafiction, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 06:54:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20616818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cronaisawriter/pseuds/cronaisawriter
Summary: An analysis of how the powers they have is connected to their trauma and relationships. It ties these concepts into what role they have in dysfunctional families. (sometimes termed alcoholic family roles).





	Hargreeve's children’s powers, reactions to abuse & dysfunctional family roles.

**Author's Note:**

> CW: Child abuse, referenced drug abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse
> 
> Also posted on Tumblr under myfandomrambles

## #1 Luther Hargreeves:

Being exceptionally strong and durable match his perfect soldier reaction very well. He wants to be everything his father could need. The hyper-masculine version of leader pertains to this too, being strong, aggressive and harder to hurt all match patriarchal masculinity.

After he receives his ape powers thus reflects him never trying to be part of the normal world, a visible and physical separation from everyone. It also signifies a tragedy of abuse.

Luther is a classic hero role in the dysfunctional family paradigm. This is a form of being a golden child. The excusing and covering up the behaviour is super common in Luther’s behaviour and is characteristic of the hero role. Keeping everything and everyone in line is a trait he has in spades. He lies about it all being fine, needing it to be done, and making up reasons for Hargreeves to have always been okay.

This role was kind of given to him by being number 1. He takes on the responsibility of the world and wants to be the perfect version of a hero/soldier. He is independent physically, but not emotionally. A codependence on his father for meaning underminds becoming a truly independent person. His role as the emotional/social oldest kid makes the golden child more in line, oldest kids often take on more leader driven ways. He’s not a caretaker position as a traditional primary abuse apologiser mainly from his hyper-masculinity.

His place as seeming to act as the older sibling in contrast to Deigo, Klaus, Ben, and Vanya is common for hero, a role often occupied by the eldest child. There are also gender components seen here as under their parents Allison and Deigo tend to play a mother and father sort of roles mirroring their parents. Their powers are also control and power for Luther and the most emotionally effective power (next to Klaus) in Allison. 

He is petrified of failure and preoccupied on never being wrong. He is under an extreme amount of control from their abusive father and in their situation, the power he poses and machinations of their father the hero title is also literal in many ways. 

## #2 Diego Hargreeves

Diego’s powers are made for fighting and violence. He has perfect aim with knives, possibly heightened agility. He powers aren’t the most powerful as his siblings which is another reason he can’t be number one in the family socially. He clearly hates being in his brother’s shadow. Like Luther, he never shook the saviour complex for the world or the violent behaviour, but unlike Luther, he pretends to be perfectly independent. He’s a weapon and knows it, but wants to be the one to wield himself. He also shows an obsession and preoccupation with his abuser, which connect to his power because there is no way to use it without remembering his dad.

He is closest to the scapegoat in this story as he is a character who speaks out against the family and does not sugarcoat any of the abuse. He openly hates the primary abuser and wants others to see it too. This leads to scapegoats often wanting to get the hell out very fast and prove he’s not like the others.

Scapegoats are often the inverse Hero/golden child and we see this with Deigo perfectly. Much of each of the identities of Luther and Deigo are not being their counterpart and they are in conflict with each other often based in their relationship to their father. 

Deigo prides himself on being a rebel, his own man, and does not do well with authority. This can be seen in his job as vigilante a very rebellious kind of job and he also could not deal with the authority of the police academy. He displays the scapegoat’s tendency to be good with practical problems but sucks with emotional connections. Deigo is highly empathetic and emotional but outside of his mother, his ability to communicate his emotions is awful. This heightened emotionality relates to impulse issues commonly seen in Scapegoats and abuse victims in general.

His tendency to want attention by not following the rules outside of the family system can be seen in the way he keeps a connection with his love interest Eudora by breaking rules and getting involved with her case. 

What we don’t see is the parent blaming or putting all of the abuse on Deigo. He isn’t exceptionally rejected by his father as this reaction was more heavily placed on Vanya. He also does not seem to face any more direct abuse than his siblings. Diego shows closest to the scapegoat and his directly mirror his reactions of impulsivity and pattern of continuing ingrained behaviours. 

## #3 Allison Hargreeves:

Alison became a perfectionist and the most social of the bunch. However, her inability to form deep connections comes from her powers here as much as emotional stunting. Literally controlling others is paradoxically people-pleasing as much as pleasing to herself, she has to have everyone like her, she makes them. Allison is a survivor who wants attention and love and her rumour power is one of manipulation where she can make others do what she wants to get love and attention. She uses it to get a partner and to get a social position of prestige where people will show her a form of affection. 

It also shows her like Luther carrying on the abuse legacy during and after a childhood with helping hurt Vanya and then being controlling of her own childhood. She is not an abuser but she does replicate some controlling behaviour by virtue of her powers and how she was taught to use them. These powers also and their extreme usefulness made her able to get what she wanted from her father, becoming a sort of favourite in a way the others didn’t have. 

In her personal attempt at the shedding of the person, her abuser tried to make her she stops using the power because she realises this behaviour is hurting her daughter and her drive to control the world had her lose control of the most important thing, her family. 

She’s along the lines of a caretaker with some manipulator tendencies. Her caretaker status is shared with Pogo and Gace, them carrying most of the enabler traits more often shielding Hargreaves. Allison is more indifferent to her father’s actions as an adult though we don’t know if she ever did this as a child. She was complicit in abuse a common caretaker position. She attempts to hold the family together by acting often as an older sister, we can see want to be kind and invite Vanya into the circle her ability to influence behaviour could also be useful here. As playing one of the older sibling roles, despite them all being the same age, she also has a caretaker position, older siblings tend to take on this role as it tends to have some parentification elements. 

She is a reflection of her mother like Luther is of their father in many ways, Allison bein the only one with kids and having an emotion orientated power. However, unlike her mother, she has greater agency and in a lot of ways has more power as an adult then Luther does. 

She has some manipulator tendencies in that she is capable of and does directly manipulate her family and world through her powers. I think her behaviour outside of these direct actions and what she wants for them is more a caretaker pattern of holding things together and is in search of emotional affection and appreciation. 

## #4 Klaus Hargreeves:

His ability to contact the dead, without control of it, mirrors psychotic or dissociative disorders. It is also relevant to his pretty much canon C-PTSD, he shows symptoms from before and then even more after his time in Vietnam. His ability to contact his dead brother, and then trying to contact his dead boyfriend is connected to C-PTSD through the way C-PTSD and flashbacks stall peoples ability to move past trauma. He is stuck in the past from those who died in the past and psychologically through flashbacks.

Klaus’s drug addiction makes sense as a way they show reactions to child abuse as substance abuse being used to make symptoms of mental illness goes away. Taking drugs to make the voices go away is extremely relatable to anyone with these kinds of conditions, even if in this sense it’s related to really hearing and seeing the dead. 

He reacts to trauma by wanting to numb out and is stagnate in a pattern of using going to rehab and using again. In the first episode, he ODs purposely being revived by someone who seems to be his friend and is an EMT. This is a reckless disregard for his safety a common reaction to PTSD.

His big moment of trying to take a step to heal is getting sober and this entails allowing his power back. Doing this allows him to fight back and channel Ben.

Klaus most aligns with mascot/clown. His literal self numbing and escapism relates to his roles want to never deal with pain and mask it away. He takes on a role as one of the youngest siblings as most everyone acting towards him as a little brother even with them all being the same age. This patronizing attitude matches the clown because he plays stupid. He chose never grow up, a common clown attitude. 

His desperate bid for any attention even negative from parents and siblings is a mascot trait. Attention seeking can be seen in his setting his desk on fire and smoking as a kid. As an adult being flamboyant, unapologetically gay, and telling dumb stories show he never really grew past this. This is mascot behaviour in the attention-seeking, and as we can see he wants to keep everyone laughing. The mascot/clown’s primary trait is never stopping acting and putting on a funny front to elicit love and to keep things from spiralling to serious, trying to break up the pain. In his need to break tension he is aware of where and how this happened, making comments about how their dad never wanted or liked kids either and jokes about his cold dead eyes. 

Mascots as adults often continue to never face the pain stuff it down and laugh it off. It can also create the problem of when they offer support to others and have ideas that are important people don’t take them seriously at all. Even though Deigo and Ben show a tendency to care for Klaus Deigo driving him places and seeming to have done this in-between them leaving and coming back, and Ben playing the angle on his shoulder they still tend to talk down. Deigo does step away from this latter on when Klaus does help him. 

## #5 Number Five

Five’s powers are integral to his place in the family dynamic, response to trauma and his general life. His manipulation of time and space relate to him being the farthest away from the trauma and an emotional distance to it. He is obviously affected by both his abuse and his experience with the trauma and alienation and loss in the future even if he has a cold distance to it having run far enough away from it. His having lived through a different traumatic experience that is currently more distressing makes him mostly accepting of his child abuse even though he is not healed from it at all. His time travel skill is a good connection literally and metaphorically to his trauma. 

His role in the family in the manipulator. this is not inherently a bad or cruel role, some analysis paints it as such but not what im going off of. This role is seen in how Five has the most control of his narrative and turned the trauma into power. He does struggle with alcoholism and in forming relationships, but he turned his training into power within the system of the Time agency thing**.

Within the family, we also see he is usually the one in control in the family and if not he takes the intellectual high ground. He was seemingly antagonistic to their father as a child and plaid off all his siblings as they all had generally neutral to positive views of five even Vanya who was not close to the family.

Five tries to almost systemically using his siblings, not out of wanting to hurt them but his natural understanding of contemplating his goals did not include just talking through it, which had he just let them in together and more fully it might have gone better.

This ability to work in the broken family system and turn the trauma into control and power is a classic manipulator. It is also linked to the narcissistic tendencies and the blunted displays of affective empathy.

## #6 Ben Hargreeves

Ben’s powers are literally a window into another dimension and he is a spirit from the next life, making his powers directly connected to his expression of abuse. He is the ultimate consequence of abuse, a child dying.

The main theories on how he died are suicide or dying on a mission. Either way, he was forced past his limits by his abuser and possibly other siblings enacting abuse. Pushed to his breaking point he died and was finally consumed. His powers were consuming others into death.

It’s hard to get a handle on his dynamic with others as all but Klaus have a view of him as someone they love but is a monument to what they lost. He was mourned as he had a statue to his death.

His dysfunctional family role is hard to gauge because we see little of him interacting with much of the group and plays a small role in flashbacks. It’s hard to as he talks little about their parents.

Ben’s dynamic with Klaus is one of being a jiminy cricket type figure while also relating to a lot of his eternal child instincts away from the drug abuse. Had he lived I see possibly a caretaker role. His current alienation and tendency to hide in a book show maybe lost child dynamics as well. We see him reading in the flashbacks as well. 

## #7 Vanya Hargreaves

Vanya’s powers are linked to her abuse majorly in that she perceived lack of powers comes from the psychological and medical abuse Hargreeves inflicted upon her to make sure she believed she was not special and in the context this really ended up with being less than everybody else. Her perceived lack of powers leads to often being socially ostracized from her other family. Often spending time wither their mother when the others were busy or playing a background role like taking notes or watching the action with Hargreeves. She desperately wanted to matter but felt so much like an outsider and worthless, all linked to her seemingly not having powers.

The lack of access to her powers and abuse that formed leaves her with no self-esteem and a stagnated life. This is inherently a reflection of abuse, trauma and the sci-fy elements a good intertwining of the concepts. 

Her actual powers are also linked, they are connected to sound and vibrations. She is clearly hypersensitive to sound even when she displays a blank face as a child. The noises Hargeeves attempted to teach her how to synch with were felt as more powerful to her then he intended them to be. However, this ability with sound waves is seen in her use of the violin. While the ability to project the sound as a force was not there her hypersensitivity might play into her natural ability. Her first powerful usage of this allowed her to be able to wow the people and win her a seat in her orchestra. 

She can’t control her powers, or her emotions acting on impulse as a child greatly harming others without ever being able to express them. We know this isn’t just a chasm of empathy as she shows care for others after this point, I think it is more connected to the fact no one seems ever helped her understand feelings always having her shut them off, this continued into adulthood. When her powers are unleashed as an adult it is in a combination of multiple factors. The main one is the abusive relationship with Leonard, repeated medication manipulation, replayed trauma by her siblings and through her music.

Her relationship with Leonard is a classic example of how abuse victims often subconsciously repeat abuse. I think this is also connected to her powers being repressed making her spend more time being raised by her mother, so she picked up on much of the abusive aspects of relationships. Leonard also uses her the same methods her fathers did via the medication and warping self-image in a mirrored way. Love bombing and taking away medication brings them back through abuse as her father took them away.

Her music allows her powers to come through because of the strong positive emotions, this is the most controlled use of her powers as well. It also helps her through her connection with vibrations. The locking her up by her brother is a replaying of her childhood trauma along with her sister invoking her rumour power. This unlocks much of power by breaking her internal barriers.

Her place in the family is the lost child mixed with some scapegoat elements. The lost child is a child who falls into the background, is often disconnected from siblings and parents and exists often in their own little world.

Vanya is pushed into the background very intentionally by the primary abuse explicitly being told she does not matter and is unimportant. She’s not allowed in many activities and excluded from any of the bonding methods, attention and much of the abuse, which while good I think is still alienating for her.

She is alienated by her siblings much of the time. Allison notices she didn’t mean to do it and does try to repair this. It is implied Five was the one she was closest with, I think this might have been because five was most in tune with what every sibling could do, even if he was unaware of her powers.

Vanya I believe gets lost in her music and seemed to have turned in on herself even as a little kid blanking out her emotions and acting without thinking. She continued to turn inward living separated. As an adult, this pattern continues.

She also plays the role of the youngest child, Allison very explicitly acts as her older sister being protective and being in a more adult state of life. Luther and Deigo are patronizing to her and dismissive. Five is placating towards her and act above her, though this is his normal disposition. This is important because the lost child is typically one of the youngest children.

She has some scapegoat aspects too being dismissed as a break in the family even by siblings and her father calling her fundamentally broken. She was also very aware of the abuse even if she still craved some recognition by her family. She also faced some direct abuse through medication and locking her up that is different from the other kids, like Klaus this is a typical scapegoat role though they better fit a different position. 


End file.
